New Zealand pinot noir: Nautilus Clay Hills, Opawa

Marlborough’s pinots are vying with sauvignon blanc for the title of NZ’s best

Nautilus Clay Hills Vineyard Pinot Noir 2015, Opawa Pinot Noir 2017, Nautilus Southern Valleys Pinot Noir 2015. Picture: Nick Cubbin.

It has been called a sauvilanche – the containers of Marlborough sauvignon blanc that have over the past decade filled shopping baskets around the world. What started as the merest trickle grew into an ocean of juicy, very drinkable, passionfruit and grass scented wine. While some of the lustre may have come off Marlborough sauvignon blanc, it has still stamped itself as a local staple destined to grace our tables for decades to come.

And the reasons are obvious. Marlborough seems to draw from its fruit, red or white, a depth and brightness that is very hard to match, much of it emanating from its local environment. Its deep latitude, just north of Hobart, combined with its maritime location gives just enough warmth to ripen early-ripening grape varieties.

Even among discerning wine drinkers, Marlborough is often considered a single homogenous entity responsible for a tidal wave of wines of similar character. But delve deeper into the more premium examples and wide differences between its main regions become apparent.

The Awaterre produces classic, more pungent sauvignon blanc, driven by its cool, exposed hills. To the north is the Wairau Valley, with its free draining riverbed soils and slightly more sheltered sites producing riper tropical flavours. And lastly, further inland, are the Southern Valleys – cooler than the Wairau Valley due to the distance from the ocean and with clay soils that can make more significantly flavoursome wines.

While sauvignon blanc is without doubt the current local star, there is another grape that can not only tease apart regional differences but also compete at an ultra-premium level: pinot noir, in which the slightest difference in soil and aspect can be reflected in vastly different characters. In Marlborough, pinot does this admirably – so much so that while sauvignon blanc has no doubt put it on the map, in time it may not be its most famous export. The quality of the finest local pinot noirs is now challenging for the title of the best in New Zealand.

While some local wineries have only come to pinot noir in a big way over the past decade, others made it an early focus. The team at Nautilus started the process in the eighties, their first inspiration being the show-stopping St Helena Pinot Noir from the 1982 vintage sourced from Canterbury, the first pinot noir to win a gold medal at the national wine competition. Then, with Marlborough icon Fromm’s pinot noir of 1994, they were hooked.

The first Nautilus vintage appeared in 1997 from fruit sourced from local growers. In 1998, current winemaker Clive Jones joined Nautilus, the same year the winery bought its first vineyard in the cool Awatere Valley.

Nautilus went on to make pinot noir one of its specialities – including the design of a winery around the frailties of this grape variety, overseen by Clive and his vintages in Oregon and at the famed Domaine Dujac in Burgundy in 2004.

Planting material and the mix of different clones in a vineyard is also particularly important for pinot. Again, Nautilus was experimenting with what worked best in Marlborough. In 2001 and also in 2003, wines were made from fruit sourced from a mix of French and American pinot noir clones, each made and bottled separately. After sustained research it became clear that no one clone was dominant in terms of quality, and that the best wines resulted from a wide variety of clones co-fermented together. In this case the whole was much greater than the sum of its parts.

Choosing the right plots has also been important in Nautilus’s evolution. While it bought its first vineyard in the cooler Awaterre Valley, over time it has been drawn deeper inland to the Southern Valleys. The area’s protection from the worst of the local weather, plus clay soils and altitude, provide what the team believes are the best conditions for crafting the finest pinot noir. The Clay Hills vineyard that is now the spiritual home of Nautilus pinot noir was purchased in 2007, with much of its appeal coming not only from the site itself but also the wide variety of clones the team identified as key components of a great wine.

With the rise in the quality of Marlborough pinot noir over the past decade it will be fascinating to watch the evolution of the variety and the growing stature of the area as a home for exceptional vintages.